Robert Gibbs Swerves Into Your Beloved Host and Gets Totaled

Jul 30, 2010

RUSH: The White House press secretary, a sock puppet for the president of the United States, Robert Gibbs, swerved into Rush Limbaugh and the mighty EIB Network yesterday afternoon, and Gibbs ended up totaled.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: You would think these people would learn. You would think that they would figure it out. Gibbs launched into me. You know, folks, I don’t like talking about myself. You are well aware of this. I find it, with this regime, next to impossible. They’re always out attacking me, and Gibbs did yesterday on my remarks about the Obama Volt. We’re going to bury Gibbs today. It’s just stunning to watch these people continue to — he’s totaled. He totaled the Bam regime, swerving into me yesterday.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We got Obama as a CEO of Obama Motors, he’s gonna go in and drive the Obama Volt today, gonna go speak at Chrysler, and, folks, it’s amazing. I live rent free in their heads. I’m going to play you the Gibbs sound bites from yesterday afternoon at the White House press briefing and after I play you the Gibbs sound bites, we’re gonna take our first obscene profit break of the day. I’m gonna come back and analyze this, and I’ll show you and demonstrate why what Gibbs did yesterday was the equivalent of swerving into me and the EIB Network and totaling, if not the administration, at least the press briefing. Yesterday afternoon a reporter said, ‘What do you say, Robert or any of you, to the folks who at the beginning, a year and a half ago, were deriding this effort taking over GM, calling it socialism, calling it a government takeover, you had Rush Limbaugh today talking Obama Motors again. Is essentially the message here a sort of, ‘We told you so’?’

GIBBS: Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away. Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people that worked at these factories, that worked at these parts suppliers that supported communities, and thought we should all just walk away. The president didn’t think that walking away from a million jobs in these communities made a lot of economic sense. We’ve got auto companies that for the first time since 2004 all showed an operating profit in the first quarter of this year. It’s adding jobs. A million people leaving their job would have had a multiplying economic effect. That’s a million more people that would have been on unemployment benefits.

RUSH: Now, as I said, I’m gonna analyze this when we get back. There’s another bite to this, but nobody wanted a million jobs lost, and how much did it cost for them to create these 55,000 jobs? This bailout, $68 billion and we have 55,000 jobs. All this was a bailout of the unions, pure and simple. So here’s the second part of Gibbs launching into me, your beloved host, El Rushbo.

GIBBS: I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year and a half ago and wanted to walk away from a million explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision, whether they thought the decision they made 16 or 18 months ago different than that of the president of the United States, whether they still stand by it. You should ask Mr. Limbaugh, I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it’s not an F-150.

RUSH: Everybody on the blogosphere is trying to figure out, ‘What does he mean by that?’ That I don’t drive a competitor’s car? What does he mean by I don’t drive an F-150? Anyway, I’m not going to be distracted by that. But we are gonna analyze this, because all of this is the result of my comments on the Chevy Volt, that’s what’s got ’em in a tizzy fit.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Robert Gibbs says ‘Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away.’ We didn’t want to walk away. In fact, I was spokesman for General Motors at the time Obama took over the company. You all remember. They were giving us cars every month — a different kind of car, General Motors products to test drive — and we were driving them around and recommending them. They were great. They were fine and dandy. We were doing what we could along with the people at General Motors to save the company. What nobody really points out is why would General Motors, why was Chrysler, why were all these companies in trouble? One of the reasons was all of these mandated CAFE standards, all of these regulations.

The domestic automobile manufacturers have been forced to design and make cars that fewer and fewer people wanted because the environmentalist wackos had taken control of the regulatory agencies at the federal government — and now, what does Gibbs do? To go out and defend the administration’s car companies, you have to come out and attack me. They do not tout the company. They do not tout the product. They come out and rip me. They attack a critic. The substance of my claim was never addressed. It never is with these people. I mean, they never do address the substance. They couldn’t beat us in the arena of ideas on a debate on any of the issues. How do they defend their product with a $7500 tax credit?

Now, there’s no need to defend a product on the open market if you really believe in it but if you have to go out and give a discount of $7500, then obviously you know people don’t want it and you’re trying to incentivize them to buy it with something other than the fact they like the car. ‘Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away. Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people at work at these factories that worked at his parts suppliers…’ No, we were in favor of people who had invested. The bondholders got screwed in the deal with Chrysler. The only people ‘saved’ here were the United Auto Workers and their health care and their pensions , and what did it cost bailing out all these things to save these so-called jobs?

Nobody wanted a million people to lose their jobs. What we wanted was a free market. What anybody wants is people who love automobiles being able to design and produce the kind of cars they love because they know people will want them. Reorganize the company and come out and do it the right way instead of having a bunch of people who have done nothing but agitate people on street corners in Chicago run the company. Now here you’ve got CEO, the real CEO up there at Chrysler today. He’s in Detroit. He’s gonna go to GM. He’s gonna get in the Volt and he’s going to drive it around. I watched a little bit of it during the break here and be and he’s really happy.

He’s with his union buds and his Democrats and his at his car company. The dirty little secret here is that Ford is reporting great profits. They took no bailout money. They opted out of it. What Gibbs said yesterday really has nothing to do with an electric car. He said, ‘We have auto companies for the first time since 2004 all showed an operating profit in the first quarter of this year. Adding jobs! The money this administration invested is about $60 billion, we believe we’re on the path to recouping all of that.’ Wasn’t there a story that GM announced that they’ve repaid a lot of the loans and it turned out later they hadn’t repaid anything, this was just money being shuffled? Look, I am not comfortable here ripping into the good people at General Motors.

They have no say-so in this. They’ve been taken over by the federal government. They’ve got people running their car company from Washington that really don’t know much about it. They’re doing the best they can. I have no doubt about this. You know this electric car business has been a 100-year dream. The first electric car was proposed sometime in the early Twentieth Century, and it’s been one of these pet projects of the American left forever. Yet it has never really come to great fruition. Look, I hate to pile on but there’s a story in the New York Times today by Edward Niedermeyer. He’s the editor of the website The Truth About Cars, and the headline here is ‘GM’s Electric Lemon.’

This is the New York Times so I assume Gibbs is gonna go after this guy when he finds out what he said. ‘In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order GM to build.’ Folks, we have forgotten. Remember the shamed auto executives driving into Washington, shamed into not flying their jets, tarred and feathered and ridiculed from coast to coast by this administration — featuring a leader who is the most unqualified, inexperienced man in any room he walks into — telling these people along with Barney Frank and the rest of the Democrats, ‘You don’t get to fly here to our inquisition on your jet! You’ve gotta drive here.’

Then they drove in and they had their inquisition, they had their meetings, and Obama fires the CEO, and they drag up prototype of the Volt, and they drove it for a couple of miles — well, maybe half a block — with a couple congressmen in it. It was just pathetic, seeing all of these giants of the auto industry groveling to a bunch of people who haven’t the slightest idea about a car except maybe how to start one. Mr. Niedermeyer in the New York Times: ‘Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout,’ which is actually a $60 billion bail out, ‘add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to GM last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan GM got in 2008 for ‘retooling’ its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt,’ and why it’s going to cost $41,000.

‘In the end, making the bailout work — whatever the cost — is the only good reason for buying a Volt.’ This is the New York Times! Making the bailout work, and making Obama look good — not making General Motors look good, making Obama look good — and making his takeover look good is the only reason to buy it. It’s a car the market does not demand, is not demanding whatsoever. This is Obama telling everybody else what they ought to be driving and how we ought to be looking at things. When he gets in a limo that’s powered by a battery, then I’ll think about it. When he gets in an airplane, Air Force One, that’s powered by a battery, then I’ll look at it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, everybody’s trying to tell me what Gibbs meant with his ‘I bet Rush Limbaugh doesn’t drive an F-150,’ which is a truck. By the way, remember those two guys that wrote the book The Millionaire Next Door that we touted way back in the nineties? The most popular car among the millionaires next door that these guys surveyed was the Ford F-150 pickup truck. Now, a lot of people think that what Gibbs was talking about was, ‘Rush Limbaugh, I bet he drives GM products. He’s ripping us but I bet he buys GM. I bet he doesn’t have a Ford.’ That’s what a lot of people think. ‘I bet he doesn’t drive a Ford,’ ’cause people are assuming that certainly he knows that the F-150 is a Ford. Certainly he knows that. But then, that’s a big leap.

Or maybe he’s saying, ‘Well, Rush Limbaugh, you wouldn’t catch him in a pickup truck.’ I don’t know. I have owned a Ford Explorer. I do own three General Motors SUVs, an Escalade and two Suburbans. Actually maybe three Suburbans. I’ve lost count. (muttering) ‘Garage, driveway… Yes, three. I’ve gotta count the ones in the garages. Now, and I want to stress here at the outset that my criticism here that got Gibbs all upset, that caused him to total when he swerved into me, and my comments on all this had nothing to do with the good people at General Motors, Chrysler. They’ve got obstacles in their way just like everybody else does, and the more the government — the more this regime — is involved in your business, the more obstacles you have to deal with.

We have a command-and-control, dictator, authoritarian-type regime manufacturing, dictating that cars be made that nobody wants. Go rent the movie, if you haven’t done so on my suggestion yet, Lives of Others. It’s a foreign language film that won the foreign language Oscar a couple or three years ago. It’s about the Stasi, the secret police in East Germany back in the Cold War days. Go get it this weekend and watch it. It’s scary as hell. It’s eye-opening as hell. Mr. Buckley, William Buckley saw it, thought it was the most important (there’s that word again) movie he’d ever seen. Now, if you want to buy a Volt, by all means. If you want to go out there and get a $7500 tax credit, if you want to buy one, go ahead. You know me. I’m big on freedom. I love it.

So you want to buy a Volt, you go right ahead. I am not trying to discourage sales of the product. I’m not trying to be harmful at all, except to this administration. I am trying to expose this administration for what it is and who they are. Now, Obama’s out there touting all these jobs created. How about all the jobs he destroyed with his indiscriminate or — wrong word, with his — purposeful shutting down of dealerships? Have we forgotten this? You want to talk about jobs? Yeah, he propped up a bunch of union jobs because he owed them. He propped up union health care and pension plans with the bailout. Then he got his fingers in there and demanded they finally bring this electric car to market.

He put people in charge of it that had never been in the auto business before. Steve Forbes has a piece today . You know, Obama’s out there claiming credit for all this, but really Steve Forbes (writing in Politico, by the way) says the real heroes at General Motors are the free market capitalists who are making the company go in spite of the obstacles but in front of them by this guy and his regime. I applaud that. (clapping) Right on, right on, right on. Now, he’s also outta talking about Cash for Clunkers. He’s praising Cash for Clunkers. Everybody knows that was a disaster. That didn’t generate any new sales. All it did was shift sales into a quarter earlier than the sales would have taken place. This guy’s out there touting success and the only way, the only opportunity, the opportunity times he sees success is when the government is involved giving a tax credit or a discount.

This guy cannot go out and tout the quality of his cars, and he’s not touting the quality of his cars. He’s not touting the quality of his products — and, yes, it’s his company. He intended to take it over. He intended to take over the financial business. He intends to take over as much as he can. This guy has the audacity to go to Detroit and talk about 55,000 jobs created? How about the jobs destroyed right now in the Gulf of Mexico with this drilling moratorium? How about the jobs destroyed in Alaska right now? How about eight million jobs lost since this guy assumed office? What job creation? The audacity to run around and talk about jobs? And then the audacity to talk about jobs ‘saved’? Nobody’s ever touted jobs ‘saved,’ ’cause there’s no such thing.

Fifty-five thousand jobs created, $60 billion bailout. Can I go through again what this has cost? It’s a $60 billion bailout, $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to General Motors last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Korean battery supplier, $1.5 billion in tax breaks for you who buy the car, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan that GM got in 2008 for retooling its plants. If you add all that together you get some idea of how much you have already spent to build every one of these cars. The whole point of this is to make the bailout work. The whole point of this is so Obama can claim credit. The whole point of this is creating an illusion that the government saved something that capitalism broke. The government saved something that the evil, mean American capitalist system destroyed.

That’s the message. That’s why go to Detroit today, that’s why talk about General Motors and Chrysler. ‘Look what we did! Capitalism destroyed these companies. They were evil, they were ripping people off, they weren’t treating their union employees well.’ No, no, no. They were saddled with all kinds of CAFE, mileage standards, regulations. They were forced into making cars because the environmentalist wacko amusement had taken control of the Department of Energy and all the regulatory agencies. Let me read to you something else here from the New York Times. Edward Niedermeyer, ‘GM’s Electric Lemon — and this is why Gibbs has to run out and swerve into me rather than deal with the specific criticism I offered about the Volt.

See good intentions are wonderful but we don’t award them with anything here. We look at results. We in the country class are merit-based. We have always believed that you advance by accomplishing things. Effort’s a wonderful thing and having great intentions is a wonderful thing, but if you end up destroying what you’re trying to fix, why in the hell should you get an award for anything? ‘[A]fter billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production’ at Chevrolet, ‘instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius.’ I’m reading from the New York Times. ‘It also requires premium gasoline…’

Did you know this? No, no. The backup engine requires premium gasoline. The primary power plant, the battery they claim gets 40 miles to a charge, which means you’ve got 20 miles to go someplace and get home. The backup gets you 340 miles using premium gasoline. Now, something’s askew here. Shouldn’t whatever gets you 40 miles to the charge be the backup? Like I asked you a couple days ago, ‘When you people look at your cars, how many of you know what range you get out of a full tank?’ I guarantee you not very many of you are getting 340 miles out of a tank. Not many. I’m sure some of you are, depending on what you’re driving. Okay, so, ‘It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench [where the drive train would go) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.’

As Mr. Edward Niedermeyer writes: ‘In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order GM to build.’ Who would that be? Who would these ‘opponents’ be? You know, this didn’t start with Obama. It starts with Algore. He had the first electric car idea. Well, ‘President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt ‘will likely be too expensive…’ This is from GM. I’m sorry, it’s Obama’s task force. ‘President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt ‘will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term’…’

So another Bam task force making something nobody wants, and even the defenders in the Fake Media — I’m reading some of the critics of me out there in the partisan political operative media — say, ‘Well, I guess Mr. Limbaugh was opposed to the Internet because it wasn’t fast enough at first. I guess he was opposed to getting into buying products that…’ You people fail to understand. You do not make any effort to understand. This is not a criticism of General Motors and it is not a criticism of the Volt. We in the country class of this great nation are aghast. We are apoplectic over the fact that a bunch of know-nothings, a bunch of people who have a chip on their shoulder about this country are now running some of the greatest industries that twine this country’s greatness — and they don’t know diddly-squat, and they’re turning these great industries into nothing more than arms of their political agenda.

The Chevrolet Volt is a political statement. When President Obama is driving around in a limousine that has every protection and has the same weight that his current gasoline-powered limousine has and when it’s powered by a battery, then I’ll think about it. When Air Force One is powered by solar panels or windmills or self-generating propellers or whatever the hell else the wizards of smart have on the design table, then I’ll think about getting on one. But putting four seats on top of a lawn mower that runs on premium gasoline as a ‘backup,’ is not innovation. It is classic liberal screw-upism, incompetence, and danger.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to stress again, my comments here have nothing to do with General Motors, the people that work there, their design staff, ’cause they’re not running it, and I’m not trying to talk anybody out of buying a General Motors car. I am trying to get people to throw Democrats out of office ’cause they’re screwing everything up, and they pose a great threat and danger to this country. (interruption) No, I don’t want General Motors to fail, but I don’t know what chances they’ve got. Look who’s running ’em. They have a failure running them. I do not want General Motors to fail but a failure is in charge ’em. The guy doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, he’s in charge of General Motors, taking credit for things that are not — let me read to you from his book, The Audacity of Hope, page 100, this is Obama. For years US automakers and the UAW have resisted higher fuel efficiency standards.

‘For years U.S. automakers and the UAW have resisted higher fuel-efficiency standards because retooling costs money, and Detroit is already struggling under huge retiree health-care costs and stiff competition. So during my first year in the Senate I proposed legislation I called ‘Health Care for Hybrids.’ The bill makes a deal with U.S. automakers: In exchange for federal financial assistance in meeting the health-care costs of retired autoworkers, the Big Three would reinvest these savings into developing more fuel-efficient vehicles.’ So he’s holding ’em hostage. They’re not in charge of designing cars. Now we gotta design cars to pay the health care benefits because a US senator is holding ’em hostage. Now the president of the regime is in charge of ’em. No, I don’t want General Motors to fail. I don’t want anything in America to fail except the guy running the country. I warned you people about this, I warned you. Let’s go back, September 17th, 2008. Before the election I told you what was coming up, what this election, the future was all about.

RUSH ARCHIVE: We have automobile and aviation companies on the verge of bankruptcy or government ownership due to legislation or regulation in oil prices that could be half what they are if Congress got out of the way. We are playing for keeps, folks. This is not just another election. Events have brought us to where the government has become so invested in the affairs of the private sector that the next president will determine if the private sector or the public sector is going to be calling the shots. And Barack Obama is one of the people who could be making those decisions. Their enemies list is the private sector of this country where you work. Their enemy, all of their enemies are your employers. You have it. You can see, side by side, A-B comparison, government runs mortgages, what happens? Government gets in charge and runs health care, what happens? Government gets in charge, fixes poverty, Great Society, what happens? Affirmative action, feminism, you talk about creating a meaner America? It’s liberal policies that pit groups of Americans against one another, on purpose. There needs to be a cleansing of this process at some point, folks. Either we take control of events and address them now or events will take control with disastrous consequences if not for us surely the next generation or two. And all those people making these decisions today, the members of Congress and all that will be long gone. But your kids and grandkids will not.

RUSH: That was the warning bell, the clarion call, what the election of 2008 represented, a government takeover of industry. And a simple exercise, take a look at everything they run and ask yourself, ‘What is its condition?’ Back in June of 2009 Obama picked Edward Whitacre to run General Motors. The Bloomberg headline was: ‘Whitacre Vows to Learn About Cars as Chairman of the New GM Board.’ ‘I don’t know anything about cars,’ said Ed Whitacre, 67, at an interview after his appointment. ‘I’m gonna go in there and learn about cars.’ No, he was gonna go in there and do Obama’s bidding. I do not want General Motors to fail. That’s why all of this distresses me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is why I worry about General Motors and Chrysler and everything else Obama’s touching. No industry can survive forever, can’t survive, period, with endless and massive subsidies paid for by the taxpayers in a broader environment where the same taxpayers are losing their jobs and their homes and their savings. Folks, it’s impossible. Taxpayers who are not working cannot subsidize and save. This is not how success happens. It’s how things end up getting destroyed and broken.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My friends, I’m gonna ask your indulgence for one more segment on this whole General Motors, Robert Gibbs swerving into me and totaling the administration, running into the EIB Network yesterday. The reason I want to spend some time, it’s a teachable moment, and I also don’t want to leave anybody confused, nor do I wish to provide an opportunity for others to say I hope GM fails, which I don’t. I do not want General Motors to fail. That’s why I am upset about this. But it’s a teachable moment for people about what we are and who we are dealing with. So to set it all up, yesterday afternoon at the White House press briefing, the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about me: ‘Rush Limbaugh said some things here about Obama Motors again today. What’s your reaction, Mr. Gibbs?’ I’m gonna play these two sound bites back-to-back, bam, bam, without me in the middle of them.

GIBBS: Rush Limbaugh and others wanted to walk away. Rush Limbaugh and others saw a million people that worked at these factories, that worked at these parts suppliers that supported communities, and thought we should all just walk away. The president didn’t think that walking away from a million jobs in these communities made a lot of economic sense. We’ve got auto companies that for the first time since 2004 all showed an operating profit in the first quarter of this year. It’s adding jobs. A million people leaving their job would have had a multiplying economic effect. That’s a million more people that would have been on unemployment benefits. I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year and a half ago and wanted to walk away from a million explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision, whether they thought the decision they made 16 or 18 months ago different than that of the president of the United States, whether they still stand by it. You should ask Mr. Limbaugh, I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it’s not an F-150.

RUSH: Okay, now, Mr. Gibbs, let me explain something to you, and in the process, all the rest of you who are listening. Mr. Gibbs, you, your president, your party, have destroyed millions of jobs. You sit here and talk about protecting, saving, keeping a million jobs, you’re not fooling anybody. You and your president and your party, the Democrats, have impoverished millions of families. You have destroyed home ownership for hundreds of thousands of families. You have destroyed small businesses throughout this country. Your tax and spending and regulatory policies have driven parts of this nation into Third World status. You have taken a recession and you have made it worse. You haven’t saved or created a damn thing except for more government jobs. The real prosperity in this country right now is Washington and surrounding environs. As for the automobile industry, I’ll say this again, no industry can survive forever with endless subsidies, massive subsidies paid for by the taxpayers in an economy where those same taxpayers are losing their jobs and homes and savings. And we brag about this?

People have lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings. And you’re taking future earnings from them and bailing out industries. The saddest thing of all for General Motors, Obama Motors, is that they are pinning all of their hopes on the Volt, a car that requires a $7500 tax credit to even interest people. Look at all of the great cars that General Motors has made in its storied history, all the great cars it still makes, and they’ve been forced by the government into counting on the Volt, an electric car that has been a dream and a myth for 100 years. If you don’t believe me I’ll read to you from the New York Times from 1911 in just a moment about the electric car. They were having wet dreams about it back then at the New York Times. This makes me sad to listen to these stumped-up press conferences and town meetings touting all this great success when none of it is taking place. I do not know how in good conscience you expect the automobile industry to survive when the very people who are paying for it are losing their jobs, small businesses, savings, and homes.

Mr. Gibbs, if government ownership and subsidies were the answer, then Zimbabwe would not be a Third World country. Cuba would be teaching us how to do things. The Soviet Union would not have failed. North Korea would be the place everybody in the world wanted to go if command-and-control economies, government ownership and subsidies created a workers’ paradise. The old Soviet Union would still be in existence, Mr. Gibbs, if you were right, but you aren’t. General Motors makes great cars. We drove the Crossover SUV, a bunch of these cars. Even the Malibu we had a great time driving here. They make a lot of great cars. These models were on the drawing board long before you, Mr. Gibbs, became a spokesman for Obama. The problem is insuring the long-term sustainability of the automobile industry and your answer is to destroy bondholders. The legitimate investors in Chrysler got the shaft and were called greedy. When it came time to bail somebody out, when the government was gonna bail out Chrysler, the legitimate investors got the shaft, the bondholders, and they were told they were greedy, and who got the money? The United Auto Workers. And who got the seats on the board of directors? You! And the board of directors has members of the United Auto Workers on it. Average investors, the bondholders. Then you go out there and you destroy bankruptcy laws to reward your political allies.

This is not a sustainable economic model. To pin the hopes of this great company on a car that’s having to be forced on people is just very sad. Mr. Gibbs, I don’t believe you people care about, when you get right down to it, the car workers. You care about union leaders. You’d get rid of all these restrictions; you’d get rid of the CAFE standards; you’d get rid of all of these punitive government regulations. You’d hire companies or you’d let the company hire people that love cars and manufacture and design cars that they love and that other people would love. You’d get rid of some of the most onerous union rules that prevent these companies from hiring more people and keeping more people. You’d allow these companies to grow and be prosperous and hire people. You tout growth by virtue of what? A bailout. You tout jobs saved by virtue of a bailout. That’s what the Volt’s all about. The Volt is supposed to make sure that the American people understand that Obama saved the day and Obama knows best. Obama knows what everybody ought to be driving. He wouldn’t be caught dead in one, and the Secret Service wouldn’t let him get caught in one.

Mr. Gibbs, your entire economic model is unworkable. Look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I mean your economic model’s been tried. Every Western socialist democracy, Cuba, Soviet Union, North Korea, wherever you look, Zimbabwe, take your pick, it’s been tried. It doesn’t work. You use, Mr. Gibbs, your podium at the White House every day to spread lies, to spin, to twist, creating all these phony measures of progress, creating or saving jobs because you failed, so you have to resort to these magic tricks. The number just came out today: 2.4% revised downward GDP growth in the second quarter. People cannot buy cars or homes or get jobs with that kind of tepid growth, and yet they’re out touting it today. Let me remind you that 2.4% growth in 2007 was proclaimed a recession. When 2.4% growth happened in one of the Bush quarters, final quarters of his administration, they couldn’t wait, ‘It’s a recession, it’s a recession, it’s a recession, look, only 2.4% growth.’ Now we got 2.4% and they’re throwing parties. Look at Obama. Look at the magic of Obama, 2.4% growth. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low and plummeting in the Summer of Recovery, so much so that Vice President Bite Me yesterday has come out and said, ‘Guess what, it’s Bush’s recession,’ when just last week it was the Summer of Recovery.

Vice President Bite Me said by this time, this regime would be creating a half million jobs a month. We’re still losing 452,000. And next year — folks, this is the gut-wrenching reality — next year Mr. Gibbs and his boss intend to make it much worse than it is. They are going to raise taxes across the board on everybody, particularly on the job creators and on the wealth creators. And this is money that belongs to us. It belongs to the people. Obama’s regime is gonna take even more of your disposable income, money that you could be using to buy the Volt if you wanted to; money that you could be using to perhaps grow your business; money that you could be using to spend in the private sector to stimulate the economy. You’re not going to have it. They’re going to be tax increases next year, for everything: income, health care, you name it, double-dip recession guaranteed.

There’s no compassion in this agenda. There’s no compassion in these results. This regime, folks, does not believe in you, and that’s the saddest thing. This is the first presidency, the first administration maybe in history, maybe in my lifetime, that does not believe in the American people, does not believe in America. It believes this country is the problem in the world; that we’re not the solution. We’re no longer going to be the leader of anything. We have people happily presiding over the decline of the United States. You don’t believe in the American worker, you don’t believe in the American dream, you believe in big government, an ever-expanding, all powerful government. That’s what Gibbs and Obama and Pelosi and Reid, et al, believe. And that’s how your president is going to be remembered, just how Herbert Hoover is remembered. We live in Obamaville.

Mr. Gibbs, we all pay your salary, all of us taxpayers. And you show no respect. You have nicer things to say about our enemies than you have to say about Americans. You sue one of your own states, a state trying to protect its people. Your job, you sue the state. You declared war against the people. You’re governing against the will of your own people and in the midst of all this you run around and continue to insult all of us. One other thing. Whatever I drive, Gibbs, I pay for. The dirty little secret, Mr. Gibbs, I’ve earned it. Everything I drive, whatever I have, I pay for it. I don’t ever ask anybody for a penny, Mr. Gibbs, and I never make the assumption that anybody owes me one, unless I’m providing a service for them. I don’t ask anybody for a dime. I have no expectation that anybody else is responsible for me, certainly not you. The day will never come I want to turn over my necessities in life to people like you and Barack Obama.

You people in the White House have earned nothing. You produce nothing. The food that you’re eating at the White House mess is paid for by us, or even if you go out and grab a burger at Obama’s favorite burger joint, the odds are you’re paying for it with money that we’ve paid you. We pay for the food you eat, transportation, the jets your boss uses. There’s never any gratitude. There’s just more insults. There’s never any thanks or appreciation for what the people of this country have done for the ruling class. There’s just more contempt and insults to our intelligence.

I gotta take a brief time-out here, folks. That’s that. When we come back, you may have heard that there’s an arm of the administration, executive branch, that’s looking into amnesty without legislation. They found a way that they could do it. Amnesty without Congress acting. Now, there’s a memo circulating around about how they’re going to do it. They’re denying they’re going to do it but they’re thinking about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s Open Line Friday, El Rushbo having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, great to have you here.

Stoking you up for a six mile run, that’s what that last monologue was worth. Reenergizing the American public from behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Now to the phones, Battle Creek, Michigan, Joe, great to have you here from the home of Tony the Tiger.

CALLER: (chuckles) How are you, Rush?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Hey, I just called to let you know — and I’m sure you already do so I guess the audience — the reason that Mr. Gibbs made his statement about the F-150 —

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CALLER: — is simply a dig on you and your accomplishments basically and income. Because an F-150 is, quote, unquote, ‘a working man’s vehicle,’ and he’s basically saying you wouldn’t stoop to that level, so why should you even be making that kind of a comment about Chevy.

RUSH: Well, a lot of people are trying to figure out what Gibbs meant.

CALLER: I’m sure that’s what he meant.

RUSH: Well, I’m not. Out there — even on the insane, lunatic leftist blogs — they’re trying to figure out what did Gibbs mean when he said, ‘I don’t know what kind of car Mr. Limbaugh drives but I assure you it’s not an F-150.’ In the first place, Obama doesn’t make the F-150. Obama does not control the company that makes the F-150. It’s a Ford vehicle.

CALLER: Right, right.

RUSH: So people ask, ‘Does he even know that? Does he even know that Ford makes the F-150?’ We don’t know.

CALLER: Well, look, he may not. And you again another thing is you illustrated the depth these folks’ ignorance when you quoted from Obama’s book saying the reason that the car companies have not pursued hybrids and electric vehicles is because of the cost of retooling. Anyone involved that knows anything about the automobile industry knows that that is just completely ignorant. They retool every single year. So it’s just another example of how ignorant these people are.

RUSH: It’s something called ‘demand.’ It’s called ‘supply and demand.’ Thanks for the call out there, Joe.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me deal with something. Snerdley, no more calls about what Gibbs meant. I want to get this off the table, because Gibbs is an idiot. To talk about what Gibbs ‘meant’ is a waste of time. It’s like they say: ‘Don’t get into an argument with a fool. Don’t ever do it because it’s hard to tell who’s the fool once it starts.’ The best I can tell is that Gibbs meant to refer to a truck that GM or Chrysler builds and instead he referred to a Ford. Now, to analyze it beyond that is a waste of time, folks. Besides does Obama drive a pickup truck, does Gibbs drive a pickup truck, does Barney Frank drive a pickup truck, does John Kerry drive a pickup truck to get to his boat? Scott Brown drives a pickup truck, but do any of these elite ruling class Democrats drive pickup trucks? I know Fred Thompson drove a pickup truck. Does Hillary drive a pickup truck?

Now Bill Clinton did have an El Camino with Astroturf in the back to make it more pleasurable to lie down on (if you get my drift). Remember that, Brian? (interrupt) You don’t remember that? (interrupt) Clinton had Astroturf. He bragged about it. (doing Clinton impression) ‘I had one of those El Caminos out there, Limbaugh, and I had Astroturf back there in the flatbed. Heh, heh, heh. It came in real handy. You had to wear some knee pads in there because you get burns on that Astroturf stuff but it was better than flat metal bed.’ You don’t…? You think I’m making this up? I’m not making it up. Clinton had Astroturf in the back of an El Camino. So the Clintons drove a pickup truck but do they now?

Is that the new test? Is that the new test?

In order for me to be a ‘real American’ I have to somehow drive a pickup, an F-150? Does the government buy pickup trucks to pick Elena Kagan up to get her to the Supreme Court hearings? White House personnel, are they showing up in pickup trucks? Even if they are, who the hell is paying for it? So, no more analysis on what Gibbs meant because it’s not worth the time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Steve in Reno, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Awesome, Rush. You’re awesome, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Appreciate that, sir.

CALLER: Hey, my comment goes back to the start of the program where you were talking about not allowing General Motors to go bankrupt. I just started a third business over the course of the last 30 years, and unfortunately I’ve had two businesses that have failed, and I don’t want to minimize, you know, the trauma of bankruptcy. It’s not a fun thing, but my comment is this. They were both construction companies, and no less than five of my employees that I employed over those years have gone on to start their own companies, and they’re quite successful, I would have to say, and probably to a large degree learning from a lot of the mistakes they saw me make.

RUSH: Now, wait. Did you say construction business?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: And have you reformed, you reorganized, you in business?

CALLER: I just opened up a cabinet shop about a year ago, so I’ve gone from building custom homes, and now I’m building cabinets. But my point is this. I don’t think people — like I say, out of the five employees of mine that have started their own companies, basically they didn’t know which end of a hammer to use when they started working for me, and I trained them, and like I say they took the good points they saw from me and also the mistakes that I made, and I think they used that experience to start their own companies, and they’re very successful, and they employ a lot of people, and —

RUSH: Well, let me ask you a question.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Do you hate ’em?

CALLER: Oh, no. I love ’em.

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: I look at it, I think, well, that was something good that came out of my failure. And my point is this in relation to General Motors. I mean if General Motors had been allowed to go through bankruptcy, I believe they would have emerged a much, much stronger, more viable entity. And, you know, there would have been some pain, no question about it. But in the long term —

RUSH: Well, at the time, you know, let’s not forget something here. The automobile companies themselves did not want to go that route. And the reason they didn’t want to go that route was very simple. I don’t happen to agree with them, but this is what they said. Nobody is gonna buy a car from a company in bankruptcy, and nobody’s gonna think a car that’s purchased from a company in bankruptcy will be serviced because nobody’s going to think the company’s going to survive. They thought it would have a negative impact on sales if they were in bankruptcy, that nobody would buy anything from them. And I’ll tell you something else. There’s a sad reality here, Steve, it’s one of these many things if I could wave a magic wand I would change. When the government’s passing out money, it’s not all that hard to get in line and put your hand out, especially if it will keep you out of bankruptcy. And you’ll say, ‘Okay, got some strings attached to the money, fine, just give me the money, give me the money, give me the money, I don’t want this company to go bankrupt on my watch.’ It’s a powerful, powerful lure when people like Obama come around passing out money. So I agree with you, I think reorganization, take care of the creditors, start anew, start clean, but even if they had done that they’re still going to be dealing with these onerous mileage restrictions, CAFE standards and all that sort of stuff.

CALLER: I understand that, but they probably could have alleviated had they — you know, they coulda renegotiated union contracts which I think is probably the —

RUSH: Ha. This is the dirty little secret, with Obama in office, no way.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: The whole point of these bailouts was to make sure the unions got ownership. You know, they were never going to be allowed to go into bankruptcy in the first place even if they had wanted to.

CALLER: You don’t think so?

RUSH: No. I think they had asked for something like $50 million to avoid bankruptcy just to keep their health care and retirement pensions funded and they were turned down.

CALLER: That’s amazing. Yeah.

RUSH: Obama wanted UAW people on the board. Take a look, 55% of the stock is owned by the UAW, I believe. And what’s been fascinating about this is to watch now the UAW negotiate labor contracts with itself. It’s been kind of hilarious. Fifty billion they wanted just to shore up the health care and pensions, and they would stay in business that way and not file bankruptcy. But that was rejected by the regime. (interruption) Well, I know, bankruptcy’s called — some people call it creative destruction. It is one of those things that pops up now and then. A lot of people have come out of it and prospered. A lot of people have used it to get out of paying bills. It’s a whole bunch of tools available. Anyway, Steve, thanks for the call.

Ray in San Francisco, you’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Rush. Are you there?

RUSH: Right here, sir.

CALLER: Oh, great. Thank you for your show.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Thanks for the institute. Thank you for your leadership —

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: — your unwavering leadership.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I own two F-150s, and I’m a charter member of the Limbaugh Letter so that gives me credibility here.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. Why two?

CALLER: Because they’re great trucks. I’ve got ’93 and I’ve got a 2001. I’ve even got Ford van. We’re a Ford family and they all have V8s in them. Now, on the Volt —

RUSH: Yeah, but see, you have two Ford F-150s. That means some poor schlub out there does not have one.

RUSH: ‘You are selfish; you’re a glutton. What do you mean, you have two? Because you have two somebody that really wants one can’t have it.’

CALLER: Well, I’m sorry. He’s going to have to go out there and bust his butt like me and earn his own F-150 the way I did. Now, the Volt only goes 40 miles because that’s part of the plan, they don’t want us to travel any further than 40 miles, and the former CEO of GM, a guy named Rick Wagoner, when he took over the corporation, he said, this is in Imprimis, the publication, they did an interview with him, he said he thought he was going to head the world’s largest automobile manufacturing company, but he quickly discovered he was going to be the administrator for a health care plan.

RUSH: I remember that quote. And by the way, Imprimis is the Hillsdale College publication that’s free, and I remember that quote, remember quoting him from that quote on this program, that he thought when he finally got to the CEO position at General Motors, that he was going to be in charge of the largest car company in the world, and instead what he had to learn was how to administer the largest health care plan in the country. And I’ve never forgotten that quote. He was exactly right about it, and it’s just one of those little missing pieces that you can plug into the puzzle, say, ‘What went wrong?’